Bulking up for winter

Monday

SPRINGFIELD — Like squirrels gathering nuts when they know winter is coming, people flocked Sunday afternoon to the fourth annual Fill Your Pantry bulk food sale, eager to stash away their own vegetables, fruits, beans and grains of all kinds for nutritious winter suppers.

Maria Berggren drove over from Eugene to the former church at Fourth and A streets in downtown Springfield with her family to stock up.

“This is my first time here,” Berggren said, looking around as the sun streamed through rectangular panes of blue, red, purple, gold and turquoise glass lining what used to be the church sanctuary.

Her 6-year-old daughter, Holly, had her eyes on Jeff Broadie of Lonesome Whistle Farm as he popped kettlefuls of Dakota Black Popcorn from his 44 acres, where he grows seven grains, corn for popping and flint corn for polenta and beans.

“A couple of friends came here last year, and they told me about it,” Berggren said of the bulk sale. “I’m really just learning how to do really healthful cooking — I want to make better meals for my family.”

As her mother looked around for carrots, squash and honey, Broadie handed Holly her bag of freshly popped corn, black bits of hull clinging to the fluffy white puffs.

The little girl shook her head, no, she’d never seen popcorn with black in it, “only when it’s burned,” she said.

Sunday’s once-a-year sale of bulk foods and winter produce is the work of the nonprofit Willamette Farm and Food Coalition. The rest of the year, the old church building is the home of Sprout!, part of a system of regional food hubs dedicated to bringing local farmers and local food consumers together.

Sprout! sponsors a farmers’ market of locally produced foods every Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., with the twin goals of supporting the local economy and improving the health of local families.

Besides the market, the Springfield Sprout! location also includes a 3,000-square-foot kitchen that can be rented by the hour to help new food businesses get up and running.

Not surprisingly, many people had questions about how to use some of the more exotic grains and produce for sale at the bulk food sale, and there was plenty of information to help them out.

Ponce Christie, who works at Hummingbird Wholesale, volunteered his afternoon to putting out samples of foods — some as recognizable as molasses cookies and others as esoteric as the “Farro Big Boost Salad” — for people to taste, along with recipes they could take home with them.

Seated at a nearby table, 4-year-old Deon Morrison and siblings Liam, 5, and Maya, 8, had no questions about the fat orange carrots they were chewing with gusto.

It’s an ancient grain from Italy, “which has less gluten and more protein than wheat,” Christie said.

He grew up with a mom “who was always health-conscious,” Christie said. “At home, we always had wholesome food, but I admit that during high school I ate my share of unhealthy stuff.”

Yaakov Levine, a nutritional therapy coach, was on hand to answer questions about unfamiliar foods and their dietary benefits.

“I come here to the farmers’ market at least two or three times a month to help with nutrition questions,” he said.

“Like, ‘How do I cook this vegetable?’ or ‘My doctor says I need more of some nutrient; how do I do that?’ I teach classes to help people use these wonderful foods to improve their nutrition and their health.”

Chatting with the farmers also can reveal some surprises about the local agriculture industry, such as the fact that wild rice — a grass, not a grain — is grown as close by as Brownsville.

Mark Running, who taught agriculture in the Central Linn School District before becoming a farmer himself, said the heavy, wet clay soil of his farm “that you can’t do much else with” is perfect for rice production, which he learned from a neighbor who started growing wild rice long before he did.

The Runnings sell about 10 to 15 percent of the wild rice they grow as food, “and the rest we sell as seed to other waterfowl enthusiasts” like himself, he said.

“We like the birds — sometimes there are as many as 5,000 or 10,000 here at a time,” Running said. “There are times when the birds eat as much as 50 percent of what we grow.”

That’s OK, he said, “because creating wildlife habitat is part of our philosophy.”

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